


With the Lord's Blessing

by mybelovedcheshire



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe, M/M, Priests
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2012-04-05
Updated: 2012-04-05
Packaged: 2017-11-03 02:06:03
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,032
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/375896
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mybelovedcheshire/pseuds/mybelovedcheshire
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Father Gregory Lestrade is the head of the Cheshire Abbey -- a small, Catholic convent where Abbess Hudson and a young novice named Iain Dimmock reside. Iain, over time, is forced to come to terms with feelings that may set him at odds with the Church -- but religion is the only life he's known, and he needs Father Gregory's help if he wants to sort his life out. Problem is -- all of his troublesome feelings are about his kind-hearted priest...</p>
            </blockquote>





	With the Lord's Blessing

“Father?” Iain pressed his palm against the smooth, stone wall as he sunk into the shadows of the abbey’s cellar. 

Father Gregory had disappeared several hours ago -- something about inventory and candles, but Iain hadn’t been listening. To be perfectly honest, he found it hard to focus on just about anything when Father Gregory was in the room -- not that the attractive, middle-aged priest was aware. 

They were Catholics, after all. That would have been a crime.

“Father, are you still down here?” Damn these old buildings! The darkness had swallowed him up, and there was little he could do about it. Although the entire abbey had been wired for electricity decades ago, it hadn’t been done well, and the lights leading into the cellars often shorted out. A smart man might have brought a torch or an oil lamp with him -- but no, not Dimmock. He was impulsive -- one of the many reasons he hadn’t yet been ordained.

His eyes struggled to adjust to the shadows, but it was honestly like walking into a cave in the earth -- and it smelled like one, too. It was cold, and musty. They used them for storage, mostly -- keeping old books and robes, and the liniments of Catholic rituals. Boring things, as far as Iain was concerned. He avoided coming down here as much as possible because of the bad lighting and the long, creeping shadows. Actually, to be honest, almost everyone at the Cheshire Abbey avoided the silent cellars -- except for Father Gregory. 

A suspiciously absent Father Gregory, mind you. 

And as Dimmock navigated the winding passageways in the darkness -- regretting his decision more and more with each passing moment -- he wished that he’d come down with the priest more often. Maybe then he’d have known where the bloody light switches were, or better -- a candle. Candles might go out on you, but they were easy enough to light again if you had a match. Or they could just get the electricity fixed, and live like normal people -- frightfully devout people, but people all the same.

As he offered up a silent prayer (an inappropriate use of his God, he knew -- but the safety of his shins was at stake!), the lights flickered back on. 

“Praise the Lord,” he muttered -- and meant it. And with said Lord’s blessing, he immediately dove for an open cabinet in search of a candle, or anything that might guide him in the event of another outage. He found two, stuffed one in his pocket and snatched up an old BIC lighter. It was innocuous, but strangely out-of-place at the abbey, since they used wooden matches for all their candle-lighting needs. There really wasn’t a single room in the entire building that didn’t house at least four open boxes at any given time. 

But like so many other little inconsistencies, he didn’t think anything of it. Instead, he pressed on, through the narrow corridors until he came to a tiny room somewhere under the church itself. Under the altar itself, if he wasn’t completely turned about (which he inevitably was). 

For a brief moment, he was stricken with the thought of what might happen if he hadn’t found those candles and the lights went out again. He’d be stuck, clambering around in the darkness like a rat, with absolutely no sense of direction. Didn’t he read somewhere that total darkness can drive a person insane after several days? He hurriedly lit the candle in his hand, even though the weak, yellow ceiling lights were still on. They hummed at him, and if he hadn’t been in full possession of his wits -- he might have sworn it almost sounded mocking.

Not that he swore, of course. That wasn’t appropriate. 

“Father Gregory?” He called out again, pushing open the door to the little storage space. And sure enough, there was his priest, casually sorting through a collection of stoles -- wide, silk sashes of various colours -- with his feet up on a nearby shelf. 

If he was embarrassed to be caught in such a casual, relaxed position, the priest didn’t show it. In fact, he smiled -- an expression pleasantly contrary to Iain’s flummoxed stare. Father Gregory’s eyes dropped to the lit candle in Dimmock’s hand, his smile widening to a grin. “Too dark for you?” He asked casually. 

Iain felt a faint blush sweep across his cheeks, and quickly blew out the flame. And only naturally, the lights immediately followed suit. The room plunged into the impenetrable blackness that had haunted him as he struggled to find his way to the storage room in the first place. 

In the dark, Father Gregory chuckled. “It’ll be back in a bit,” he commented reassuringly. “Always does.” 

“Surely we can afford to have the wires fixed?” Iain asked. “We might even be able to use these rooms for something.” 

“You’ll never convince any of the sisters to come down here. Some of them think it’s haunted.”

Iain didn’t blame them. The cellars were eerie at the best of times, and for all he knew, there very well might have been demons lurking in the dark. “So we fix our eyes not on what is seen, but on what is unseen,” he murmured, willing himself to be able to see even the outline of the priest across from him. His black clothes might not be visible, but surely his freedom-loving, grey hair had a light of its own? Iain couldn’t count the times he’d watched Father Gregory at the altar, as the sunlight through the windows turned his untamable hair into a silver halo. 

“I’m not quite sure that’s what Paul meant, Iain,” Father Gregory chided. Dimmock could hear the smile in his tone. 

“Perhaps not,” the younger man replied, grateful that the darkness hid his awkward, but pleased grin. “Father, the nuns, actually- the Abbess is looking for you.” 

He could have sworn he heard Father Gregory groan. 

“Isn’t she always,” the priest answered. “Concerned for the safety of my soul, no doubt.” 

Iain beamed. “She says you spend too much time down here, in the darkness. It’s not healthy.” 

Father Gregory chuckled -- that was twice now, Iain noted. “Not for my lungs, no. Too much bad air.” 

The lights flickered briefly, but didn’t stay on. 

“Well, we could wait them out,” the priest continued, “but there’s a chance we’ll be stuck here until Judgement Day. Probably wouldn’t do to meet the Heavenly Host smelling like a cellar, though, so we might be better off praying for our shins and aiming for the light.” 

Iain held back a snort of laughter. “Isn’t that a bit blasphemous, Father?” He heard shuffling in the darkness just ahead of him -- Father Gregory had put the box of stoles aside and stood up. 

“Is it? I don’t know about you, but I wouldn’t want to meet our Saviour when my clothes reek of old wine. Not unless I’d brought a couple of bottles with me.” 

“But surely he wouldn’t mind?” 

“About the wine? Perhaps not, but he might object to being called Shirley.” There was a long, awkward silence as they each stared into the void. “No?” Father Gregory asked. “Are you really too young to remember- well.” He sighed. “Never tell an old joke to a churchmouse.” 

Dimmock had the grace to blush -- not that either of them could see it. 

At the Cheshire Abbey, a churchmouse was a child raised in the church orphanage. Abbess Hudson felt it was a kinder and happier term than ‘ward’ or ‘orphan’, and no one -- not even Father Gregory -- had the nerve to question it. He might have been the church-appointed leader, but absolutely everyone knew who was really in charge. 

Iain was just such a churchmouse -- brought to the abbey as a very small child, and left in the care of the nuns until he was old enough to legally make his own decisions. His education, as a result, had been mostly religious and lacking in both outside influence and popular culture. And -- like so many of his so-called siblings -- he found some of the older abbey-dwellers’ jokes and euphemisms difficult to understand. To this day, the only time he’d ever seen Father Gregory in a proper rage was when someone had smuggled a CD player and something called ‘electronica’ into the abbey.

Some things only needed to happen once. 

And even though he’d been exposed to pop music and television, it didn’t captivate him the way it did the younger kids. For them, bad music -- not all music, mind, just the fraudulent abomination of modern genres as Father Gregory put it -- was harmless. It was something they could indulge in when they wanted to feel just a little bit naughty, without putting their eternal souls at risk. Of course, the nuns didn’t approve, but frankly, there were worse sins to be worried about. 

Father Gregory reached out slowly and placed his hand on Iain’s shoulder. “We’ll have to brave the darkness,” he said, with a reassuring squeeze. “Trust me?” 

“Always,” the younger man answered -- suddenly aware of the way his heart hammered against the inside of his chest. He closed his eyes and silently prayed -- begged, really -- God not to let him hear it. 

Father Gregory moved past him, finding his way to the door without so much as a hesitant step. Even as Iain turned around, he felt his foot connect with a box that he hadn’t known was there. He was going to fall flat on his face in moments if he didn’t get a little more guidance.

“Father?” There was a nervous quiver in his voice, and it made his stomach turn anxiously. 

The priest’s voice was some distance off when he spoke up. “Yes?” Iain heard him laugh, and felt an embarrassed burn creep across his cheeks. “Are you still back in the closet?” 

“I can’t see the exit,” Iain answered, trying not to whine as he stretched out his arms to try and find the frame of the door.

The soft shuffle of footsteps echoed in the corridor. When Father Gregory spoke again, his voice was much nearer. “Right here,” the priest replied gently as Iain’s fingers scraped over his chest. 

Dimmock yanked his hands back as if they were on fire. The momentum and low visibility made him tip backwards. Tipping turned into a stumble as the back of his legs connected with yet another cardboard box, and before he knew what was happening, his arms were flailing wildly as he pitched towards the floor.

But he never landed. He expected a heavy crash, and pain, and lots of noise, none of it happened. Two strong arms grabbed the front of his shirt and held tight as he slipped, keeping him upright. 

“Careful now,” Father Gregory warned -- the laughter still fresh in his voice. “I think-” He shuffled Iain to the side carefully. There was a sharp thunk -- had he kicked the box? “Yeah, silver candelabra in there. Certainly wouldn’t want to fall on those.”

At that moment, Iain rather wished he had. He wished he’d fallen into a box, that the box had swallowed him up, and then plummeted through a sudden and mysterious hole in the ground so that when the lights came back on -- if they ever did -- no one would find him or be witness to his embarrassment. 

But if there was one thing he’d learned from countless hours of study and sermons -- miracles didn’t happen just like that. Instead, Father Gregory had saved him -- and he hadn’t let go. 

“Thank you,” Iain mumbled, sounding breathless. 

He must have sounded frightened, because the priest gave him a comforting pat on the back after he hauled Iain to his feet. “It’s a little spooky, I know, but don’t worry. I’ll get you out in one piece.” Taking his hand, Father Gregory tugged Iain out of the tiny, cramped storage room and through the narrow, winding corridors that formed the abbey’s cellar. 

The lights never came back. They made the entire crossing from closet to staircase in the shadowless dark. And if at some point Father Gregory had noticed how their fingers slowly became entwined -- he never said a word.

**Author's Note:**

> I don't have my stories beta'd 'cause I'm lazy. Feel free to report any typos or missed words -- it'll be appreciated. (:


End file.
